The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. By John J. Mearsheimer. New
York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 555 pages. $27.95. Reviewed by Andrew J. Bacevich,
professor of international relations, Boston University.

This is a book of
considerable wisdom, larded with considerable nonsense. Most of the wisdom derives from
the work of others. The authors own contributiona theory of offensive
realismis unpersuasive. Worse, its conclusionsattempting to shed light
on the challenges facing the only truly great power left standing after the cataclysms of
the 20th centuryrest on a breathtakingly inaccurate understanding of what makes
America tick.

At its best, The
Tragedy of Great Power Politics offers a useful primer on realism, a concept that
explains the behavior of states in terms of power and self-interest. As the author, a
political scientist at the University of Chicago, rightly points out, instinctively
liberal Americans have never been entirely comfortable with the language and logic of
realism. They bridle at its dour view of human nature. They resist its pessimism regarding
the feasibility of world peace. Yet that discomfort by no means prevented American
policymakers as far back as 1776 from adhering to realist principles. As John Mearsheimer
writes, the United States speaks one way and acts another.

Yet Mearsheimer aims
to do more than puncture illusions, perhaps still harbored by a remnant of innocent
undergraduates, that the United States, uniquely among nations, acts in accordance with
the Sermon on the Mount. His larger purpose is to offer offensive realism as
an explanation of all great power politics, useful not merely in understanding the past
but also in predicting the future.

His theory reduces
to a handful of propositions. Like any good realist, Mearsheimer believes that
international politics is at root about power: The overriding goal of each state is
to maximize its share of world power. Given this imperative, there are no
status quo powers in the international systemnone, that is, except the state
that achieves hegemony. But few reach this ultimate goal. Indeed, in all of modern
history, only one has done so, namely the United States, which since 1900 has enjoyed
hegemony throughout (but not beyond) the Western Hemisphere. (Mearsheimer dismisses global
hegemony as a practical impossibility.)

Since all
great powers are primed for offense, they invariably seek to improve their
relative standing by acting aggressively toward one another. Indeed, survival
mandates aggressive behavior. Furthermore, aggression pays: more often than not the
attacker wins. As one great power, resorting to blackmail or outright war, makes its play
for hegemony, other great powers face a choice of either balancing (assuming
the burden of checking the aggressor) or buck-passing (passing that burden onto others).

In determining the
outcome of this competition, the role of land power is dominant. Only armies decide.
Wars are won by big battalions, Mearsheimer asserts, not by armadas in
the air or on the sea. The strongest power is the state with the strongest army.

These iron laws
describe the way that all great powers behave (or at least should behave.)
The result qualifies as genuinely tragic, according to Mearsheimer, because
statesmen (and, presumably, mere luckless citizens) have no real choice in the
matter

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offensive realism
compels them to pursue power and to seek to dominate the other states in the
system. The imperatives of offensive realism trump human agency and ideology:
It does not matter for the theory whether Germany in 1905 was led by Bismarck,
Kaiser Wilhelm, or Adolf Hitler, or whether Germany was democratic or autocratic.
Germany would have behaved as it did regardless of who ruled according to what values. By
extension, theres not a dimes worth of difference between Hitlers
Germany, Stalins Soviet Union, and Roosevelts United States. Great powers are
as interchangeable as billiard balls.

To substantiate his
theory, Mearsheimer hauls the usual suspects into the dock. As proof that offensive
realism corresponds with the actual behavior of great powers, he points to the
expansionism of Germany and Japan through 1945 and of the Soviet Union throughout its
existence, along with the balancing and buck-passing that each induced from their
adversaries.

Mearsheimers
larger challenge is to incorporate into his theory those two apparent exceptions to the
rule, Great Britain and the United States, to show that these less-obviously aggressive
great powers also adhered to the precepts of offensive realism. With that in mind, he
devises an ingenious corollary to his axiom about the supremacy of land power, to wit,
the stopping power of water. According to this corollary, Armies that
have to traverse a large body of water to attack a well-armed opponent invariably have
little offensive capability. Insular powers such as Great Britain and the United
States are unlikely to initiate wars of conquest against other great powers
not because they are more virtuous but because they would have to traverse a large
body of water to reach their target. Offensive realism mandates that insular powers
confine themselves to the playing the role of offshore balancer, intervening
only as necessary to block another powers quest for dominance.

But does water rob
armies of offensive capability? Do insular powers invariably refrain from initiating wars
of conquest against other great powers? Is it true, as Mearsheimer contends, that the
United States as the present systems sole status quo power will shy away from
making a continental commitment except when necessary to balance a would-be hegemon?

Mearsheimer knows
that unless he can answer all three questions in the affirmative, the explanatory power of
offensive realism collapses. But only the most tendentious arguments and the most
selective use of evidence get him to yes.

To substantiate the
ostensible stopping power of water, for example, Mearsheimer declares that there is
no case in which a great power launched an amphibious assault against territory that was
well-defended by another great power. Normandy, it turns out, was not well-defended:
the Allies had achieved air superiority before D-Day, placing the Germans at a severe
disadvantage. Nor were the various Pacific islands that the United States captured at such
great cost during World War II well-defended: once its navy had been broken at Midway,
Japan no longer qualified as a genuine great power. (So much for wars being won by the big
battalions.)

Then there is the
problem of imperial Japanits position as an insular nation analogous to that of
Britain and the United States, but its chosen role from the 1890s onward not exactly that
of an offshore balancer. Didnt Japan in 1904 and again in 1941 initiate
a war of conquest against another great power? No, explains Mearsheimer, because Japan
never aimed to conquer Russia or the United States itself, just vast tracts of Asia.

Finally, and most
troubling of all, there is the problem of US policy since the end of the Cold War. With no
one left to balance in Europe and Northeast Asia, offensive real-

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ism requires the
Americans to pull up stakes and go home. That they have not is irksome indeed. The author
treats with contempt suggestions that a continued US presence abroad has any strategic
rationale, contributing to stability from which the United States itself benefits:
Peace in these two wealthy regions is not a vital American interest. Indeed,
he argues that instability might actually pay. Alas, evidence that the United States plans
to withdraw its troops anytime soon is nonexistent, leaving Mearsheimer to mutter that
too little time has passed since the end of the Cold War to divine American
intentions.

The United
States is an offshore balancer, insists Mearsheimer, not the worlds
sheriff. Perhapsconsistent with the dictates of offensive realismthe
United States ought to play the role of offshore balancer. But the demands of
theory notwithstanding, authentic realism counsels against confusing ought with is.

Authentic realism
calls for recognizing the fact that the United States did not prevail in two world wars
and the Cold War just so it could enjoy unquestioned primacy over Canada and Latin
America. The United States cares less about lording it over the likes of Uruguay and
Ecuador than about wielding clout in Europe, East Asia, the Persian Gulf, and now, Central
and South Asia. Hence, the alacrity with which the United States commits US forces to such
places, despite the supposed stopping power of water.

For guidance in how
to formulate American statecraft, policymakers look less to political science than to the
imperatives, real or imagined, of democratic capitalism. The grand strategy that the
United States pursues does not content itself with merely seeking assurance against the
rise of another regional hegemon. Ideology matters. National security as
Americans have come to define the term incorporates requirements for continuous economic
expansionism and recognition of their own values as universal values.

Truth to tell, the
United States today is anything but a status quo power. It does not accept the
impossibility of exercising hegemony beyond the cozy confines of the Western Hemisphere.
Indeed, it is bent on transforming the international system in ways intended to perpetuate
and extend its existing global preeminence. As the events of 11 September suggest, this
project does not command unanimous assent abroad. But as the events since 11 September
demonstrate, mere resistance is not going to persuade the United States to abandon the
attempt.

If there is an
element of tragedy about great power politics, it stems not from the fact that God is an
offensive realist who designed creation accordingly and thus condemned humankind to a
perpetual struggle over which it exercises no influence. Fortunately, God is not a
political scientist, and creation is far more interesting on that account.

The world is one of
good and evil, vaulting ambition and petty vanity, great heroism and abject cowardice,
qualities that dont figure in the antiseptic world of theory. From time to time in
that real world some nation emerges out of the pack fired by the conviction that its
destiny is to direct history to its intended final destination. The result is sometimes
great achievement, often great sacrifice and slaughter, typically leading to overextension
and exhaustion, culminating in decline or outright defeat.

In many respects,
the United States is like every other great power in history. In other respects, it
differs, profoundly so. Whether those differences will enable us to avoid the fate of
prior great powers remains to be seen. But this much is certain: its now our turn to
see just how far up the greasy pole of world power we can climb and how long we can retain
our perch. The question is not whether we can make it to the top, but the price to be
exacted by the attempt. Based on the experience of others, the cost is likely to be dearer
than we anticipate. Therein may lie the real tragedy.

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A Grand Delusion: Americas Descent into Vietnam. By Robert Mann. New
York: Basic Books, 2001. 821 pages. $35.00. Reviewed by Richard Halloran, formerly
with The New York Times as a foreign correspondent in Asia and military
correspondent in Washington, D.C.

When an 821-page
book on the war in Vietnam thuds onto ones desk, a question leaps to mind:
Does the nation really need another book about Vietnam? It would seem that
everything that could be said about the Vietnam experience has been said and every angle,
pro and con, examined. Early this year, the Amazon booksellers listed more than 1,600
serious books about the 25-year struggle surrounding Vietnam, of which 964 were histories,
393 were nonfictional analyses, and 257 were memoirs. The literature on Vietnam, beginning
in 1982 with the late Colonel Harry Summers seminal work, On Strategy: A Critical
Analysis of the Vietnam War, is so extensive that the need for yet another volume,
especially one so long, is questionable.

Moreover, the
author, Robert Mann, is a victim of bad timing through no fault of his own. His book
appeared just before the terrorist assaults of 11 September 2001, which traumatized most
Americans and riveted everyones attention on President Bushs campaign against
terror. It would seem that interest in Vietnam, like the old soldier in the Army ditty,
has not died but just faded away.

Even so, the book by
Mann, a longtime Senate aide, may have a place on the bookshelves of die-hard students of
the Vietnam era, as the author focuses on the responsibility of the Congress for letting
America get dragged into that quagmire. He claims that this is the first
comprehensive single-volume account of the Vietnam War that places the roles of leading
members of Congress in their proper perspective. The author concludes: From
almost the beginning of the war to its end, the story of Congress is one of tragic
abdication of power and responsibility.

Throughout the book,
Mann expands on the theme of congressional irresponsibility. During the presidency of
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the author contends that leading members of Congress were
either quiescent or ignorant about US policy toward Indochina. President
Kennedys policy was set, Mann asserts, with little more than minor grumbling
from compliant members of Congress who were still blissfully ignorant and uninformed about
the stakes in Southeast Asia.

President Johnson
comes in for especially bitter criticism for his stance on Vietnam, as does the Congress
during that period. The vast majority of members of Congressdespite having
been deceived about the Gulf of Tonkin incidentsenthusiastically gave Johnson carte
blanche to fight the war on his terms. Congress during President Nixons tenure
fares not so badly, as the authors guns are trained mostly on the President himself.
Like a gunslinger in a Western movie, Mann writes, Nixon shot his way
out.

Even with his
hammering at the Congress, Mann does not excuse the Presidents from Truman though Nixon.
Vietnam, he contends, did awaken millions of Americans to the fact that
their Presidents had routinely lied to themabout the American military role in
Southeast Asia, about Watergate, and about a host of other issues.

Mann sometimes
overstates his position. For example, Vietnam unleashed a level and a variety of
public dissent never before seen in American politics. That overlooks the
Declaration of Independence, with its long list of particulars in dissenting against the
rule of King George III. That established an honorable tradition of dissent in

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American politics
that continued through the Revolution, the Mexican War of 1846, the Civil War on both
sides, World War I, and before World War II until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in
1941. It resumed during the Korean War and, to a lesser extent, reappeared during the Gulf
War. Even with the overwhelming public support for President Bushs campaign against
terror, dissenting voices are heard.

The author is also a
bit shaky on the history of Vietnam itself, asserting that the French finally fled
Indochina after the debacle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Not so. There were plenty of
French troops around Saigon in 1955Germans in the Foreign Legion, North African suppletifs,
and a French high command that sought to undermine the early American effort there. Also,
the author says the Cao Dai religious sect was formed after World War II, when it dates to
1919.

But he is right on
one critical point, that Vietnam continues to be a political issue in America. Those
candidates who avoided service must, decades after the fact, defend impetuousand
sometimes calculatingdecisions made in their teens, Mann says. Presidents
Clinton and Bush were confronted with that question and congressional candidates in the
fall of 2002 should also be ready to explain their lack of military service during the
Vietnam era.

Michael Walzer on War and Justice. By Brian Orend. Montreal:
McGill-Queens University Press, 2000. 234 pages. $24.95. Reviewed by Shannon E.
French, Ph.D., ethics professor in the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law at
the US Naval Academy, where she teaches a course on The Code of the Warrior.

Issues of war and
justice are on everyones mind since the horrific events of 11 September. President
Bush and the members of his Administration have toiled admirably to assemble a strong,
international coalition for the New War on Terrorism. Nearly all nation-states
(excluding those targeted as terrorist supporters) have joined in a cross-cultural,
interfaith denunciation of the attacks on the Pentagon and New Yorks World Trade
Center. Various levels and forms of assistance have been pledged in support of the US-led
anti-terrorism campaign, from aid in freezing the terrorists finances, to
intelligence sharing, airspace and military base access, and the actual commitment of
troops and equipment. The United States was able to unite its allies so successfully in
part because it could appeal persuasively to the justice of the cause. Americas
leaders and spokespeople have made an effort to stress that, in retaliating against the
terrorists and those who harbor them, the United States is striking not from mere rage,
but from moral necessity. This new war, we have assured the world and
ourselves, is a just war.

Philosophers,
statesmen, and theologians have long struggled with the question of how to determine
whenif everit is morally justifiable to take a nation to war. The list of
scholars who have made key contributions to the just war tradition, either by addressing
the subject directly or through broader work in the field of ethics, includes Augustine,
Aquinas, Grotius, Kant, Hegel, and Mill, among many others. Since the 1977 publication of
his magnum opus, Just and Unjust Wars, the first name in present-day just war
scholarship has been Michael Walzer. In Just and Unjust Wars and subsequent related
works, Walzer uses classical discussions of jus ad bellum (on the rules for taking a
nation to war) and jus in bello (on the rules for conducting a war) as a launching pad to
create an updated theory that has been labeled the legalist paradigm.

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Classical just war
theory demands that certain criteria be met before a war is regarded as just.
These include: (1) the war must be declared by a legitimate authority; (2) the war must be
fought in a just cause (e.g. to avenge wrongs or restore unjustly seized land or
property); (3) the war must be fought with good intentions (e.g. to restore peace); (4)
going to war must be the last resort (peaceful alternatives having been exhausted); (5)
there must be a reasonable probability of success; and (6) the benefits of going to war
must outweigh the predictable costs (macro-proportionality). Classical just war theory is
still sound in many respects, but it also has many weaknesses open to exploitation. For
instance, classical just war theory has been used to try to justify wars to reclaim
unjustly seized territory when that territory has been integrated into a new
nation for many years and to condemn revolutions against tyrannous sovereigns. Walzer
presents a more complex, modern interpretation of the appropriate justifications for war.
The legalist paradigm draws connections between the rights and responsibilities of
individuals and those of nations. It demands that the sovereignty of existing states be
respected, that aggressive nations be punished (in some cases with preemptive strikes),
and that actions be taken to prevent crimes against humanityeven, under certain
conditions, if it means getting involved in civil conflicts.

Brian Orends
recent work, Michael Walzer on War and Justice, carefully examines Walzers
version of just war theory and how it coheres with the theory of distributive justice
elucidated elsewhere in Walzers writing, such as in Walzers 1983 treatise, Spheres
of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. Orend, a professor of philosophy at
the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, writes much more gracefully than do most
philosophers. Thankfully, he also does not overuse the field-specific jargon that so often
limits the potential audience for contemporary scholarship. Orends style, which
includes brief summaries at the end of each chapter and a comprehensive conclusion at the
close of the book, should make his analysis of Walzer accessible to all interested
parties.

Much of Orends
book is dedicated to his attempt to reconcile the universal theory of international
justice found in Walzers earlier just war writing with the assertion found in
Walzers later works that distributive justice depends on the recognition that the
value of goods, far from being universal, is in fact culturally relative. Whether Walzer
is consistent across the corpus of his publications may not be of great concern to
non-philosophers. However, in the course of presenting a well-reasoned case that
Walzers general theory of justice can provide grounds for his seemingly
contradictory theories of just war and distributive justice, Orend simultaneously does an
excellent job of explicating the most interesting aspects of Walzers views. Nor is
Orends look at Walzer limited to mere exegesis. In an evenhanded manner, Orend
alternately praises and criticizes Walzer. Some of the best segments of the book come when
Orend identifies a gap in one of Walzers theories, such as Walzers
far-too-limited mention of the issues of jus post bellum (justice after war), and proceeds
to offer his own original suggestions on how the hole could be filled by building on
Walzers foundations.

The topics Orend
covers in his expertly routed tour of Walzers theories include: (1) the tension
between thin morality (the basic moral commitments shared, according to
Walzer, by nearly all humans, encompassing prohibitions against murder, torture, and
extreme cruelty and an insistence on certain fundamental human rights, such as the rights
to life and liberty) and thick morality, which is Walzers term for the
more specific morality that guides our daily lives and which is, thick, robust,
resonant, culturally particular, close to home; (2) the value of democratic
socialism (a subject on which Orend is rightly critical of Walzer, given Walzers
completely counterintuitive assumption that his socialist vision

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is in harmony with
existing American values); (3) responses to realist and pacifist challenges to just war
theory; (4) Walzers perspectives (or those inspired by Walzer) on jus ad bellum, jus
in bello, and jus post bellum; and (5) the complexities of international justice.

Even those readers
who do not much care whether or how Walzers approach to these diverse topics can be
integrated into a single, general theory of justice stand to enjoy a great deal of
intellectual stimulation from engaging with Orend on subjects that could not be more
timely. The brutal assaults on our nation placed a sudden, tragic weight on our
understanding of war and justice. For all who suffered the emotional impact of an autumn
that saw the moral and political landscape worldwide change in a day, there may be some
unexpected solace in Orends painstaking, academic precision.

The Lessons and Non-lessons of the Air and Missile Campaign in Kosovo. By
Anthony H. Cordesman. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001. 416 pages. $70. Reviewed by
Colonel Richard M. Meinhart, USAF, Director, Strategic Management Systems, and holder
of the General Brehon Burke Somervell Chair of Management, US Army War College.

If one truly wants
to gain an understanding and appreciation of the political and military complexities of
the 78-day air and missile campaign over Kosovo and Serbia, then wading through this
detailed book is definitely worth the effort. Anthony Cordesman has great credibility in
the defense intellectual community based upon his prolific and well-received works over
the past 20 years. His expertise spans the many facets of modern warfare and incorporates
his experience as a senior defense, international, and political leader. This book will
add to his stature, for it is a thoughtful, thorough analysis of the lessons and, perhaps
more important, the non-lessons associated with the air and missile campaign over Kosovo
and Serbia.

The author first
whets the readers appetite with a succinct discussion of why we need to know both
the lessons and non-lessons of this war. The historical background of the NATO campaign is
then fully addressed before the grand strategy, force planning, military effectiveness,
and targeting implications are introduced. The author presents an excellent balance
between military and political issues, so the reader gains a holistic perspective of the
complex challenges of the campaign before examining the substantive lessons learned and
not learned.

As the book
progresses, the author provides short analytical insights to clarify and focus the
readers attention and to gain closure on specific issues before moving on. As war is
a series of actions and reactions, Cordesman identifies many of the possible what
ifs associated with the Kosovo conflict. He clearly highlights that the political
constraints associated with the conduct of this particular operation should be viewed with
a sense of caution about generalizing and applying the lessons learned from Kosovo to
other operations or force capability decisions. He uses this cautionary approach to
provide an intellectual framework for later discussions. The author states, Not only
was airpower not decisive in Kosovo, trade-offs that weaken land and sea power put a
steadily heavier burden on air and missile power, and create added pressures to use it in
missions where air and missile power alone may not be able to do the job. Cordesman
also raises a serious question, revisited later in the book, as to whether the
Office of the Secretary of Defense and Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have the
professional integrity to be entrusted with such damage assessments and lesson reports, or
whether they should be turned over to an inde-

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pendent commission
with direct oversight by Congress. This question clearly establishes
Cordesmans view as an independent perspective for much of the subsequent analysis.

The central portion
of the book provides a detailed and roughly chronological review of the effectiveness of
the wars air and missile operations on various targets. Cordesman primarily uses
reports provided by the Pentagon and NATO, but he also considers, and then critically
dismisses, many Serbian reports in an attempt to provide a balanced perspective. He
effectively assesses the bombings impact on strategic targets such as fuel,
industry, and infrastructure nodes. Next, he provides critical insight into the more
controversial effect (or non-effect) of air and missile operations on tactical land
targets and their resultant impact on the Kosovo Liberation Army operations. In a section
titled, The Pentagon Lies to Congress and the American People, Cordesman most
seriously challenges the credibility of US reports in a documented, factual manner.

The last major
section of the book (about 100 pages) is particularly valuable for military planners.
Cordesman organizes the detailed lessons and issues of the air and missile operations from
Kosovo along 34 main subjects. These are presented as weapon-system specific (e.g., A-10,
AH-64, bombers), capability specific (e.g., refueling, precision strike, cruise missiles),
and general categories (e.g., forces, European versus NATO defense initiatives,
management). This unique categorization provides an excellent reference source for
military planners. The supporting charts, the extensive notes, and the many pages of
quoted speeches and reports further solidify the books excellent utility as a
reference.

Cordesmans
final chapter on the complex regional issues beyond air and missile power
offers an excellent summary of the stability challenges that NATO and the regional players
will face in the future. It includes a sobering conclusion that the difficult work of
peaceful conflict resolution faces us in the years ahead.

The books
detailed description of eventswith its extensive reliance on US and NATO
leaders speeches, testimony, and reportsis both a strength and weakness.
Usually, Cordesmans details provide enough balanced information for the reader to
either agree or disagree with his analysis of a particular event or military issue. For
example, his section on NATOs reporting of the effectiveness of the air and missile
campaign exemplifies the authors expert integration of charts, quoted material, and
analysis. Occasionally, though, the author presents excessive detail, bludgeoning the
issueand the readerwith too much quoted materiel. A prime example: almost 14
pages of his 16-page discussion of the inadvertent Chinese Embassy bombing consisted of
Defense, NATO, State, and CIA quotes. That material could have been synthesized and more
efficiently presented.

The audiences that
would benefit from reading this analytical work include strategic and operational military
planners, US and foreign national security officials involved in policy development and
approval, and academics who write and teach in the defense policy field. This book is not
for the casual reader of military history or the general public, however. Its somewhat
dry, analytical style requires great patience from the reader. For those who do persevere,
the journey is worth the effort.

It seems another
analyst of United Nations peacekeeping has determined that the glass is half empty rather
than half full. Dennis Jett, a distinguished retired Foreign

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Service officer,
focuses on many of the challenges associated with modern-day peacekeeping in Why
Peacekeeping Fails. The author observes that these are not easy missions, and there
are many reasons for failure. Jett unfortunately focuses on the negative more than the
positive. Yet his analytical approach is sound, and he points out many lessons learned
from this type of operation, lessons that practitioners need to know and understand.

Success or failure
is in the eye of the beholder. Would you consider the UN missions in Eastern Slavonia or
Cambodia a success or failure? Most who know these missions would consider them a success.
What about Haiti? When it ended, it was considered a success, but today with an
ineffective parliament and refugees once again fleeing across the sea, success is not
quite so clear. What about the UN mission in Cyprus? It has been ongoing for over two
decades, yet there remains no war between two of our NATO allies. Failure has the same
connotation; it is in the eye of the beholder. Jett defines success by quoting an article
in International Peacekeeping in which D. Bratt says success in peacekeeping is
defined by four distinct criteria: completion of the mandate, facilitation of conflict
resolution, containment of the conflict, and limitation of casualties. Bratt, like Jett,
looks at a peacekeeping mission with 20/20 hindsight.

It is easy to look
back at any UN peacekeeping mission, pick it apart, and find its faults. It is much harder
to be an active participant, look forward, and determine how best to succeed. This
reviewers concern with Jetts book, besides his taking an after-the-fact view,
is that he focused almost exclusively on peacekeeping missions in Africa, including
in-depth analyses of Angola and Mozambique. African missions are some of the most
difficult ever encountered by the United Nations. All who understand UN peacekeeping would
agree that the mission in Angola was a failure. I was fortunate (or unfortunate, depending
on your point of view) to sit in the Security Council chambers and watch UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan tell the members of the Security Council that the mission in Angola had
failed. After nine years of work by the UN and the international community, it was obvious
that Jonas Savimbis rebel group, UNITA, would continue to prosecute the war.
Peacekeepers would only get in the middle of this civil war, and the UN learned not to do
this from their experiences in Yugoslavia. So it was time to pull the plug. That was hard
personally for Kofi Annan.

As for Mozambique,
Jetts analysis says that the mission was only a marginal success. However, many in
the international community see Mozambique as a model for other missions to follow. Again,
success is in the eye of the beholder. Any major operation of this magnitude will have its
ups and downs. Lessons can be gathered whether they result from success or failure, and
this is the real value of Jetts work. He does the analysis. From it, the leader is
able to discern guidelines for future missions.

Jett provides a
service for those studying and analyzing UN peacekeeping. I only wish he had expanded his
analysis to more missions and taken a more positive approach. UN peacekeeping has come a
long way in the last decade. Certainly, like all multinational, multidisciplinary, and
multidimensional operations there will be problems. Jett remains skeptical about the
international communitys ability to overcome these challenges. This reviewer is more
optimistic.

Jetts analysis
of these operations and the resulting lessons learned provide the practitioner with
additional tools to meet the challenges associated with todays peacekeeping
missions. For this reason, I highly recommend that those interested in analyzing and
studying peacekeeping read this book.

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Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the
Civil War. By Charles B. Dew. A Nation Divided: New Studies in Civil War History
series. Ed. James I. Robertson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. 124
pages. $22.95. Reviewed by Dr. J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr., Professor of Military
History, US Army War College.

In this volume,
Charles Dew, a history professor at Williams College whose previous Civil War work
includes a biography of Joseph R. Anderson of the Tredegar Iron Works, decided to wade
into the still lively debate about the causes of the Civil War. He examines the question
from the Southern point of view during the secession crisis in the late fall and early
winter of 1860-61.

Lincolns
election caused the states of the deep South, led by South Carolina, to secede. Secession
led almost immediately to the dispatch of commissioners from the seceded states to other
Southern states that were still debating the issue. The commissioners were official
representatives who were supposed to explain why their state had seceded and encourage
similar action from their audiences. The commissioners almost universally had some
connection to the state to which they were accredited. Some had national reputations, but
most were locally prominent businessmen or politicians. They addressed governors and/or
secession conventions, so they were dealing with influential people; their activities were
high-profile events. The commissioners sometimes presented the coordinated, formal
official positions of their states; in all cases they had at least general instructions
from either their state legislature or secession convention. Of course, the commissioners
made speeches, wrote letters, and even published pamphlets. The newspapers reported their
activities in detail. The commissioners explanation of secession could be expected
to be both politically correct for the time and as persuasive as possible for a
contemporary Southern political audience. That was the whole purpose of their
missionsthey were apostles of disunion.

Surprisingly,
although the existence of this primary material has long been known, modern scholars have
largely overlooked it as they debate the causes of the Civil War. Professor Dew concluded
that as official contemporary statements by Southerners to Southerners, the
commissioners accounts probably provide as honest and as useful an explanation of
secession as one is likely to find.

Because of his
Southern heritage, Dew says he was surprised by what he discovered. His analysis led to
the inescapable conclusion that three themes ran strongest through the extant sources. The
first was that Republicanism, equated in the South to abolitionism, was a threat to racial
supremacy. The commissioners insisted almost to a man that Republican ascendancy in
Washington placed white supremacy in the South in mortal peril. The fear was of both
political and social equality. Second was the prophecy of race war. The commissioners
believed the Republicans would encourage and even incite slave rebellion and pointed to
John Browns Harpers Ferry raid as evidence. Finally, the commissioners
predicted racial amalgamation as the ultimate product of Republican rule. Interracial
marriage threatened Southern womanhood. Of course, the commissioners used every available
argumentstates rights, tariffs, etc.to bolster their point. However, Professor
Dew finds their emphasis on the racial issues embedded in slavery as the heart of their
argument.

After the war even
unreconstructed Southerners changed their tunes, and the states rights issue rose to
the top of their list of grievances. That was not what they had said at the wars
beginning. Perhaps Henry L. Benning, a Confederate general and famous

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states rights
advocate both at the time and after the war as an associate Georgia Supreme Court justice,
said it most plainly in his address as a commissioner to the Virginia secession
convention: What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of
secession? Benning asked as he opened his speech to the Virginia delegates.
This reason may be summed up in a single proposition, he answered. It
was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that separation from the North
was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of slavery. Slavery was
the basis of Southern society, economy, and culture. The South viewed the Republican Party
as an abolition party. Slavery and Republican control of the national government could not
coexist, so the South withdrew from the union.

Despite his Southern
heritage, Professor Dew should not have been surprised by the result of his investigation
(and I am unconvinced that he actually was). The material he uses and his approach are
newthe conclusion they lead to is not. The chief position of one of the contending
schools in the debate about the causes of the Civil War is that only unreconstructed,
uneducated, or unengaged Southerners cling to the view that the war was primarily a
struggle over states rights with slavery as at best a peripheral issue. The only
states right that really counted was the right to slavery. That logic has been
espoused for years without winning the debate. Apostles of Disunion will not likely
settle the argument. Potential rebuttals remain. One, on which Professor Dew unfortunately
touches only briefly, is the claim that all the slavery talk was simply propaganda, and
the real issues were the underlying political and economic struggles. There is, of course,
evidence to support that point of view. I found Apostles of Disunion
convincingothers will not. All should read and ponder it.

Legacy of Discord: Voices of the Vietnam War Era. By Gil Dorland.
Washington: Brasseys, 2001. 249 pages. $26.95. Reviewed by Dr. Henry G. Gole
(Colonel, USA Ret.), who served with MACSOG and 5th Special Forces Group in two
Vietnam tours of duty.

Gil Dorland has
written a dispassionate and balanced book based on interviews with 18 key players in the
Vietnam War and one historian of the period, most of them readily recognizable to a
military audience. The authors objectivity is worthy of note, particularly
considering his background. In 1963 the US Military Academy graduate, then a captain,
became the first of four brothers, sons of their colonel father, to serve in Vietnam. Two
of the brothers served two tours in Vietnam, and two were woundedthe author
seriously and twice. His credentials as a military brat and published author gave Dorland
access to some men generally reluctant to be quoted on record.

Dorland elicits
divergent then-and-now perspectives of high-powered individual subjects about the war. His
choice of intervieweesmilitary men, policymakers, journalists, two Vietnamese (one
from each side), and anti-war activistsensures provocative reading for Vietnam War
junkies and general readers alike. Despite a few standard questions posed (for example,
the prospect of Chinese intervention, the quality of the armies engaged, consideration of
the use of nuclear weapons, the prospect of victory, and individuals
opinions of leading personalities), it is difficult to summarize the wide-ranging
discussions and conclusions out of context in a short review. Generally, they may be
characterized as follows: McNamara, incrementalism, and micromanagement are treated with
scorn; former advisers and those who worked most closely with the Army of the Republic of
Vietnam (ARVN) give Vietnamese soldiers surprisingly high marks; and the lessons of
Vietnam deeply influenced

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the American
soldiers and statesmen who later conducted the war against Iraq. In brief, the value of
the book is chiefly in the observations, insights, and gems provided by thoughtful men,
once deeply engaged in the war and still associated with it.

Barry McCaffrey is
quoted as saying, Combat was the most totally absorbing, selfless, and worthwhile
thing I had ever done in my life. Similarly, Norman Schwarzkopf comments on the
meaning of service to others: As I look back over my life, when I felt best was when
I was serving a cause for which I didnt receive anything tangible back.

Peter Arnett
responds to the charge by General William C. Westmoreland and others that journalists
Arnett, David Halberstam, Malcolm Brown, and Neil Sheehan were too young and inexperienced
to cover the war. He does so by pointing out that they were no younger than World War II
correspondents and that one must be young and virile and bold enough to go out in
the field and get your ass shot at. Halberstam had covered the civil rights movement
in the South and the Congo War before he went to Vietnam. Brown had covered the Cuban
campaign and had been in Vietnam four years before Westmoreland arrived. Arnett was 30,
had been in Southeast Asia for eight years as Westmoreland took command in 1964, was
married to a Vietnamese woman, had a brother-in-law who was an ARVN colonel, and remained
to the end in 1975. Halberstam has had a distinguished writing career, but he says at age
65, and gray, Vietnam is still my identity. It never goes away. Its still the
dominant story of my life.

War protester Tom
Hayden says he was convinced that the best way to support American soldiers was to stop
the killing, adding: The war was fought intensely around dinner tables. I
wasnt alone when my father wouldnt speak to me for 15 years.

Senator John Kerry
served two tours in Vietnam, one of them commanding a small boat in the Mekong Delta in
combat. He says, It was a wonderful time in all its craziness. There was a great
bond, a great connection that forged. But the decorated hero turned against the war
in 1969 and became a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Senator John McCain,
who was very badly handled as a POW, found combat invigorating, adrenaline inducing,
and very exciting in many respects. But he is very critical, saying he was
disillusioned and angry, at the way the air war was managed.

Harvard graduate
Daniel Ellsberg was a marine during the Suez crisis, one of McNamaras whiz kids in
the 1960s, and a true believer who did some of his research in the muck of a rice paddy
before leaking the Pentagon Papers to TheNew York Times in
1969. It was in the course of writing a McNamara-directed history of the decisionmaking
behind US involvement in Vietnam that he turned against the war, in order to stop
the meaningless killing of American soldiers. He still considers himself a patriot.

James Webb
distinguished himself as a combat marine, public official, novelist, and thinker. He says,
In my mind, I am a writer. In my heart I am a soldier, and I always will be.
His remarks about then and now are, as usual, clear and stimulating.

Le Ly Hayslip was a
poor Vietnamese girl and Viet Cong supporter who later married an American and experienced
culture shock in moving from Vietnam to metropolitan America. She has returned to Vietnam
often for humanitarian purposes, regarding herself as a bridge-builder between the two
worlds.

ARVN Colonel Cau Le
was decorated for bravery 28 times, including Vietnams Medal of Honor and
Americas Silver Star. He was wounded three times. The 1963 graduate of
Vietnams Military Academy was a regimental commander at 28. From 1975 to 1988 he was
in POW and reeducation camps, never seeing his five children. His wife was permitted to
visit him once a year for 15 minutes. He now lives in the United States.

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Gil Dorland takes
the reader to what Webb calls the most divisive issues in this country since the
Civil War. His subjects reflections about how the Vietnam War appeared to them
then and some 30 to 40 years later ring true. Students of war and politics will read this
book with interest. Thoughtful veterans will experience feelings of pride, regret, and
shame.

No single individual
did more to shape Allied strategy in World War II than General Sir Alan Brooke, later
Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) and principal
military adviser to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Each night throughout the
war Alanbrooke described key events and vented his exasperations in a diary which he wrote
for his wife. The text underwent several postwar revisions by Alanbrooke and his
biographer, Sir Arthur Bryant, and the various edited versions have inspired a great deal
of controversy. Keele University professor Alex Danchev and graduate assistant Daniel
Todman have gone back to the original handwritten diary and reproduced it free of the
omissions and reshaping of which Bryant was especially guilty, though they have included
postwar comments written by Alanbrooke where the additions supplement the original text.
The unexpurgated diaries are even more illuminating and controversial than previously
released editions, and should be an invaluable resource for anyone studying World War II.

With this work,
Danchev and Todman have provided two valuable contributions for students of history. The
first is historiographical. The editors delineation of the course and degree of
revision in Bryants and Alanbrookes later use of the diaries reveals much
about how history is written and interpreted, and the editorial comments throughout the
text highlight significant omissions or distortions that occurred. The complete text and
additional Alanbrooke comments also strengthen the value of the diaries as an important
historical document, filled with fascinating insights about the forces and men that won
World War II, and revealing much about the complex thought and growing frustrations of
Alanbrooke himself.

Though Alanbrooke
was obviously brilliant, his intellectual arrogance can be wearing at times. He was very
patronizing toward other Allied leaders, especially the Americans. He thought Dwight
Eisenhower was a gifted politician with no real military skills, and considered George
Marshall to be fair and honest but possessing no strategic sense. Alanbrooke was not much
easier on the British, being especially critical of the other ranking members of the
Imperial General Staff. He considered his nations lack of competent senior
leadership to be a result of the high casualties of World War I. Though he was a
benefactor of Bernard Montgomery, Alanbrooke appreciated the difficulties Montys
lack of tact caused in coalition warfare. Alanbrooke particularly disdained Charles De
Gaulle, though he was very impressed with Joseph Stalin, judging him the most competent
strategist of all major leaders of the war. Alanbrooke also gave high marks in that
category to his predecessor as CIGS, Sir John Dill, as well as Douglas MacArthur.

The book is
dominated, however, by Alanbrookes love-hate relationship with Churchill. While the
CIGS had great respect for the Prime Ministers courage and fortitude, he was
continually exasperated and often enraged by Churchills lack of stra-

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tegic focus and
penchant for wild schemes. As the strain on both men grew, Churchills health
declined and drinking increased, further fueling Alanbrookes anger and despair. On
numerous occasions the diarist vented his frustration with passages like, Without
[Churchill] England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of
disaster time and time again.

Of course in
Alanbrookes view, he is the one who averted that disaster. For anyone trying to
understand the British approach to coalition strategy during the war, this volume is a
must-read. Alanbrooke, like the rest of his British counterparts, can be faulted for being
too wedded to the Mediterranean approach. He resisted the cross-channel invasion right up
to the end, and remained infatuated with knocking Italy out of the war and bringing Turkey
in. Only late in the war does he intimate in a few entries that the Italian campaign did
not produce the drain on German resources he expected, but he never admits to any personal
error in strategic judgment.

As with all diaries,
this lengthy book can be dry reading at times, especially when dealing with get-togethers
with friends and family. But it is full of fascinating passages, and the sections dealing
with the proceedings surrounding the many high-level strategic conferences between Allied
leaders are particularly interesting, as is the earliest part of the diary when Alanbrooke
commanded British Forces in France. Danchev and Todman have provided a resource that will
provide revelations for experts, students, and general readers alike, and at a very
reasonable price.

Hidden Heroism: Black Soldiers in Americas Wars. By Robert B.
Edgerton. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001. 271 pages. $25.00. Reviewed by Major
Robert L. Bateman, Department of History, US Military Academy, West Point, New York.

According to the
about the author section of this book, Robert Edgerton is the author of
more than 20 other books on a variety of sociological, anthropological, and
historical topics. He is currently a professor of anthropology at the UCLA School of
Medicine. Based upon the evidence of this book, as a historian Edgerton is a pretty good
sociologist. Despite that faint praise, this book is a fairly well rounded, if extremely
limited, contribution to the field of military history. It does not, however, break any
new ground in the sub-field of the African-American experience of military service.

In the
acknowledgments and introduction, the author states that the reason he wrote this
book was to address an issue not dealt with in any depth by previous works on this topic:
the racist contention and stereotype that blacks were natural cowards, and
thus unfit for service. Although Edgerton runs through a litany of the most recent works
of military history on the topic, he almost immediately dismisses them. Hidden Heroism,
Edgerton claims, moves beyond these mere works of military history because it places
the African-American military experience within the larger social and cultural context of
the history of race relations in the nation as a whole. By doing so the author states that
he can explain how the natural coward stereotype came to be and why it was
sustained.

This, unfortunately,
is somewhat superfluous. Other books have not addressed the broader American social and
cultural context when dealing with the military experience of blacks for two reasons. To
begin with, the military side of the story alone is huge, and deserves much more space
than the average publisher is willing to allot. The

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second reason is due
to what, for lack of a better term, might be called the Homer Simpson
Critique. Through much of US history American society suffered from racist
influences. The military, constituting a subset of American society, reflected this
generally racist makeup. To quote, then, Homer Simpson: Doh! Sometimes one
does not need an entire book to state the obvious.

Still, Edgerton
might have been on to something. I can see how the US military experience of
African-Americans, taken within a larger societal whole, could be a worthy topic for a
book of 1,000 to 1,200 pages. One could hardly do the topic justice in fewer. In fact,
that is what Edgerton has done here.

Hidden Heroism
starts off with an apology that should make any historically savvy reader pause when
picking this book off the shelf. Edgerton says, Because Hidden Heroism spans
more than two centuries of warfare under changing social and cultural conditions, it
proved impossible for me to consult all the primary documents in any systemic
fashion. The fact is, although he may have consulted some of the primary source
documents (the very foundation of any quality work of history) he never uses more than a
handful in the entire book. For example, in the first chapter alone, a chapter that ranges
from the American Revolution through the end of the Civil War (covered in 31 pages), of
the 137 endnotes no more than four are from primary sources. The rest rely on secondary
sourceswhat somebody said about what somebody else said about an event. Thats
not the most sound methodology. There are good reasons why historians striving to write
sound history demand a reliance on primary sources. How else can one strip away the
filters of previous authors?

Edgerton provides,
in a later chapter, a perfect case study for this. In discussing the experience of blacks
fighting in the Vietnam War, Edgerton recounts the story of Arthur E. Woodley, Jr.,
a black paratrooper with the 5th Special Forces Group. Woodley tells of
befriending a member of the Ku Klux Klan from Arkansas in Vietnam and, at a different
point, of finding a white soldier flayed alive and staked out in the sun, to whom Woodley
administered the coup de grace because no rescue could be made in time. It was
an act which to this day is alleged to be the foundation of Woodleys post-traumatic
stress disorder. Edgerton cites as his source for this incident another secondary source.
Apparently Edgerton never did any oral histories or research on the topic; he certainly
never interviewed or researched Woodley.

If he had, he might
have discovered that Arthur E. Woodley, identified by Wallace Terry (the author of Bloods,
cited by Edgerton for this passage), was never with the 5th Special Forces Group. Woodley
may well have gone on some deep patrols, as his military record does indicate he was a
member of a divisional recon unit, but it appears that he knowingly misled Terry regarding
his military record. The fact that Woodley claimed several awards he didnt earn,
including multiple Purple Hearts, suggests that his accounts of events may be less than
reliable. People go to history books expecting to find facts. Reliable sources form a
foundation; again, that is why historians, at least most military historians, insist on
primary sources. Edgerton violated this precept and has passed on a legend, presenting it
as a fact.

There is also a
problem with Edgertons central thesis. Perhaps because this book is so small and
thinly researched, he either did not have the time or space to address the fact that there
were actually two competing manifestations of racism expressed in attitudes toward blacks
in the military. The first, which Hidden Heroism does address, was the
aforementioned myth of the natural coward. The second was the

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belief that
African-American males were likely to become crazed in combatleaving the control of
their officers and running amok on the battlefield in an orgy of violence. The obvious
irony is that while these racist assertions were intellectually mutually exclusive, they
were expressed simultaneously as reasons for barring blacks from armed service. Yet
Edgerton is apparently unaware of the second myth, despite the fact that it was one of the
central issues raised in the debates over the creation of some of the first all-black
combat units during the Civil War, and was raised again prior to World Wars I and II.

Although
Edgertons motives are pure, his reasoning generally sound, and his prose clear and
easy to understand, this is a book that is only one-quarter as long as it should be given
the academic claims of its author and the scope of the material. If Edgerton were an
amateur or an unseasoned writer, one might not expect more, but readers should expect far
more from an author who holds his academic credentials out for inspection on the
book-jacket. From an academician of some stature, we should expect a work of scholarship.

Unless you are
compiling a library of all works on this topic, regardless of quality, you are better off
saving your money until somebodyone hopes a historianwrites the 1,000 pages
this topic deserves.

The turbulent career
and controversial thinking of the late Colonel John Boyd, USAF, are lauded in this
biography by Grant Hammond, a self-described Boyd disciple. His personal loyalty to Boyd,
however, has prejudiced Hammonds judgment, resulting in a one-sided, exaggerated ode
prone to hero-worship. Still, Boyd was undeniably an innovative thinker and had a
significant influence on the defense community, and this work has real value if the reader
can get past the recurrent David versus Goliath theme of Boyd single-handedly taking on
and defeating the US Air Force. Moreover, since Boyd never published his ideas, Hammond
has done a great service by recording Boyds theory of strategic paralysis and
maneuver warfare, focusing on a process known as the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA)
Loop.

The first half of
the book is dedicated to the service career of John Boyd, the self-acclaimed maverick
fighter pilot. Indeed, it was on combat missions during the Korean War that he had his
grand epiphany. In a dogfight, the F-86s advantage over the MiG-15 lay in its
ability to transition more quickly from one maneuver to another. This insight proved
fundamental to Boyds thinking. He went on to instruct at the Fighter Weapons School
at Nellis Air Force Base and wrote the schools first aerial combat manual. His
operational flying days at an end, Boyd went on to spend the next 20 years crusading for
the procurement of more maneuverable fighter aircraft.

Arguably,
Boyds most significant contribution to fighter aviation was the development of the
energy maneuverability diagram. This allowed for the first direct comparison of
performance capabilities between aircraft and remains a useful tool for fighter pilots
today. Boyds obsession with maneuverability followed him to the Pentagon, where he
worked on the initial development of requirements for the F-15. Unable

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to prevent the Air
Force from designing a large, expensive, highly technical fighter, he jumped ship. He then
formed the Fighter Mafia which, against the wishes of the Air Staff,
successfully lobbied for the smaller, more maneuverable, less expensive F-16. Following
his retirement in the mid-1970s, Boyd continued his fight against waste, inefficiency, and
the greed of the military procurement system by establishing the military reform movement.
He also continued to provide insider information to Congress and the media.

The second half of
the book addresses the autodidactic Boyd, a man dedicated to study and reflection, who
then creates his magnum opus in the form of a 327-slide, 12-hour oration: A
Discourse on Winning and Losing. Presenting this briefing over 1,500 times, Boyd
expands his thinking beyond the tactical decisionmaking of a fighter pilot who must
transition from one maneuver to the next more quickly than his adversary. Boyd describes
this thought process as the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) Loop and goes on to apply it
to any encounter with a breathing, thinking opponent. The outcome is then determined by a
series of decisions and actions. Boyd asserts that victory is achieved when one performs
the OODA Loop faster than ones opponent, causing the adversarys system to
collapse into confusion and disorder. Of the four steps of the OODA Loop, orientation
proves to be the most critical. It consists of a combined process of analysis and
synthesis based on cultural traditions, genetic heritage, previous experience, and new
information.

To better illustrate
his method of thinking, Boyd makes an example of the snowmobile, created from the
handlebars of a bicycle, the outboard motor of a boat, the rubber tread from a toy
bulldozer, and the skis from a downhill skier. Although constructed of parts designed for
other purposes, the outcome was a vehicle perfectly suited for its conditions. Boyd the
eclectic and inductive thinker likewise draws his ideas from a wide variety of
disciplines, including biology, chemistry, mathematics, and military history. (For a
complete copy of Boyds reading list, see James G. Burtons Pentagon Wars,
Appendix A.)

In keeping with the
idea of the snowmobile, Boyd the theorist is best understood as a synthesizer of other
theorists. He is most closely aligned with Sun Tzu, emphasizing deception, surprise, and
shock in gaining victory. Boyds deemphasis on technology finds him agreeing with
Clausewitz over the persistence of uncertainty and friction in war, but parting ways in
regard to the importance of direct attack on the enemys main center of gravity.
Instead, Boyd aligns himself with maneuver warfare proponents such as Guderian, Fuller,
and Liddell-Hart, arguing that the focus of attack should be on multiple noncooperative
centers of gravity. He defines these centers of gravity as those vulnerable yet
critical connections and activities that permit a larger systems center of gravity
to exist. Strategic paralysis is thus achieved by a combination of cutting
communication, disrupting movement, and enveloping the adversarys forces and
resources.

Whether one agrees
with John Boyd or not, his ideas have had a great influence on military thinking,
particularly within the US Marine Corps. In this regard, chapters 8 through 10, entitled
Patterns of Conflict, Maneuver Warfare, and A Discourse on
Winning and Losing, are particularly useful in understanding his ideas and way of
thinking. The majority of the book, however, which regales the reader with tales of
Superman and his perennial fight for truth, justice, and the Boyd way, is so biased as to
have scant utility for anyone save the most ardent Boyd aficionado.

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Made by the USA: The International System. By Alex Roberto Hybel. New
York: Palgrave Press, 2001. 340 pages. $49.95. Reviewed by Russell W. Ramsey,
Ph.D., D. Min., Professor of Latin American Studies, Troy State University, Visiting
Professor at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, Ft. Benning,
Georgia.

Professor Alex Hybel
subscribes to the proposition that open and democratic systems have a marked advantage in
the acquisition and retention of global influence. He then vitalizes this theory by
describing the rise of the United States to world preeminence, employing a highly original
structure and a set of sophisticated, internally consistent paradigms.

Dr. Hybel is the
Susan Eckert Lynch Professor of Government at Connecticut College and a well-known
lecturer on both world and Western Hemisphere politics. For the first six chapters in Made
by the USA, Professor Hybel describes the relevant political actors and forces, the
economic influencers, and their relationship. These chapters are arranged chronologically,
starting with the early 19th century. The author manages, in amazingly short space, to
show cognizance of a multitude of explanations for the outcomes of world power struggles.
Without consciously delineating military power as a separate entity, he weaves a succinct
and accurate portrait of relative military power in each period. He emphasizes forces over
actors, and economics over ideology, without ignoring any of the factors.

Chapter seven
describes the United States as the worlds fully developed hegemon, and Professor
Hybel makes no assertion that is not adequately sustained by the groundwork laid in
previous chapters. The scope of Hybels sources is simply staggering; his
massive use of references sustains his far-flung entry into differing economic,
political, and military realms. Sometimes excessive footnoting can be tedious to the
reader, yet Hybels prose flows at such a snappy pace, it invites the reader to
continue.

The book is perhaps
the most inclusive short description yet written of how the United States became the
worlds primary hegemon at Cold Wars end. It is also totally convincing,
leaving in intellectual tatters the work of those who consider correct ideology to be
determinative. The reader will respect Hybels conclusions even when not in
agreement, for the documentation is so powerful and the logic so deceptively simple, yet
airtight.

In way of
recommendations, this reviewer would have liked an entry on the Spanish Civil War, as it
illustrates the failed policy of US neutrality during the 20th centurys divisively
ideological civil wars. Also, a few examples of naval and maritime power application by
the United States would strengthen Hybels thesis, when couched in Mahanist
philosophy. But these additions could make only small improvements in what is likely to be
the best book of its kind in print.

While the general
reader would benefit from this book, it is tightly packed with interdisciplinary facts and
analysis, and with answers to intellectual battles about international relations en route
to the finish line, all adding up to some heavy lifting. However, Professor Hybels
book is strongly recommended for courses at all levels in international relations, world
politics, or economics. Read in conjunction with Professor David Landess 1998
blockbuster, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, the book would be excellent for a
general course on the world in the 21st century.